Word: formatively
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...Johnny Carson was the undisputed king of late-night television. During part of that time, CBS and ABC scarcely bothered to try to topple him from the peak of the Nielsen ratings. When they did, as in CBS'S venture with Merv Griffin in a Carson-style format, they flopped. CBS eventually gave up and last year opted for the sizable audience of insomniacs who want nothing more than to watch old movies. Now ABC thinks that it has found still a third audience with what it calls its Wide World of Entertainment...
Wide World is a rotating sequence of four formats-a week each of Jack Paar, Dick Cavett, comedy and mystery, with two nights of rock music thrown in as a fillip. The package includes just about everything, it seems, but trained seals beating out The Star-Spangled Banner on the xylophone. Its first six weeks have ABC executives glowing-and crowing. Says Michael Eisner, vice president in charge of program development: "Philosophically, I am wildly enthusiastic. And it is working." Translation: Eisner likes the format and so do a lot of viewers...
...million for Paar to 5 million for the week of mystery shows to 4.1 million for Cavett. But all-including Cavett-have done better than the old Cavett show alone. It remains to be seen whether viewers, normally creatures of almost daily habit, will opt for a less varied format on some other network once Wide World's novelty wears...
...format is that of a musical revue. Most of it is sung or spoken in pidgin Spanish, some in pidgin French and German, and none in English. Much of the show is mimed and the real language is basic zany...
...Gilbert's comedie manque does not refresh. Like real life, it can even be quite a bore. Gilbert struggled manfully with the fact that the life he was filming did not lend itself easily to a dramatic format, that like most lives it essentially lacked the clear developments and resolutions of fiction. Not only did he edit his 300 hours of film down to 12, but he arranged his episodes out of chronological order, beginning with the last day's filming, New Year's Eve, 1971, and then recapitulating the previous seven months. From the first episode, Gilbert tried...